Madison - Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's only daughter, whose defection to the West during the Cold War embarrassed the ruling communists and made her a best-selling author, has died. She was 85.

Svetlana Alliluyeva, who was known as Lana Peters since 1970, died of colon cancer Nov. 22 in Wisconsin, a state where she lived off and on after becoming a U.S. citizen, said Richland County Coroner Mary Turner.

Her defection in 1967 - which she said was partly motivated by the poor treatment of her late husband, Brijesh Singh, by Soviet authorities - caused an international furor and was a public relations coup for the U.S. But Alliluyeva, who left behind two children, said her identity involved more than just switching from one side to the other in the Cold War. She even moved back to the Soviet Union in the 1980s, only to return to the U.S. more than a year later.